This time, I listened alone.
His voice came through low and strained.
“Audrey, you don’t understand what you’re doing. Your father has enemies. A lot of them. You think he’s protecting you? He’s using you. He’s always used you. I can protect you from what’s coming, but only if you bring Leo home tonight.”
I replayed it.
Then again.
Not for his tone.
For the phrase.
What’s coming.
My bedroom door opened.
My father entered before I called him. Marcus stood behind him.
“You heard?” I asked.
Marcus nodded once.
My father took the phone from me and listened.
For the first time since the hospital, I saw uncertainty cross his face.
Not fear.
Recognition.
“Dad,” I said slowly, “what is he talking about?”
My father turned to Marcus. “Get the files from the North Harbor matter.”
Marcus stiffened.
“Yes, sir.”
“The what?” I asked.
My father looked at me.
In that moment, he seemed older than he had that morning.
“There are things I kept from you after your mother died.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“What things?”
He sat in the chair beside my bed.
“Your mother’s accident was not just an accident.”
The air vanished from my lungs.
For years, the story had been simple and terrible. A wet road. A truck driver who fell asleep. My mother’s car pushed through the guardrail outside Evanston. Dead before the ambulance arrived.
I had built my grief around that story.
It was ugly, but it was finished.
Now my father was opening it again.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying the driver had gambling debts. I’m saying those debts disappeared two days after the crash. I’m saying the company that owned the truck was later traced to a shell group tied to a failed Brooks Global competitor.”
I stared at him, unable to blink.
“You knew this?”
“I suspected. I could never prove enough.”
“And Dominic knows?”
“That is what concerns me.”
My hand moved protectively over Leo.
“How?”
Before my father could answer, Marcus returned with a sealed gray folder.
But he was not alone.